Into the Fourth Dimension by Ray Cummings

Ala was saying, "At last -- it is so good to be back. " For her the struggle was wholly past; she was smiling, relieved, and upon her face there was solicitude for us. "You are not injured? At rest -- now?"

"Yes," said Will. "It is over. " His hand touched Bee affectionately. "The strangeness will soon be gone, I think. You all right, Rob?"

"Yes," I said. In truth, every moment a rationality of being was coming to me. And curiosity, of itself evidence of normality, made me ask, "Where are we going? What are we going to do?"

"Going with Ala," said Will briefly. "Her people are friendly to us -- deploring the threatened invasion of our world."

I realized that he and Ala at their first meeting must have exchanged knowledge, and planned what we now were to do.

Bee asked, "Are we going far? Will it take long?"

Ala seemed puzzled. "Far" -- "long. " The words involved Space and Time. I saw that at first they had no meaning to her.

"We are going there," she answered. Her gesture was vaguely downward ahead of us. "Come," she added.

We started. My impression now is that we were walking. I could feel a part of my body in movement, quite as though of my volition I were moving my legs. A sense of lightness again possessed me; a lack of stability. But I could feel solidity beneath me, and I was moving upon it.

We walked then, down the hill. There was vegetation; things, let me say, seemed rooted within the ground. But they bent from our advance as though with a knowledge and a fear that we might tread upon them.

The scene was no longer empty. A rolling land, with what might have been a mountain range rising in the distance. All in that half-light of seeming phosphorescence. I noticed now that the familiar convexity of earth was gone. The scene had a queer concavity; to the limit of my vision it stretched _upward_; as though we were upon the inner surface of some vast hollow globe with the concave darkness overhead coming down to meet it. A hollow globe within which we were standing; but it seemed of infinite size.

Not far away now was that region which first I thought was water. We passed over it -- partly through it. I felt the resistance against me. Like water with no wetness; but to my sight it was a heavy fog lying upon the land. Its breath was oppressive; I was glad when we were past it, emerging again into the twilight with a city before us.

A city! Houses -- human habitations! I knew it -- divined it with a new mental alertness; and Ala's words presently confirmed my thoughts.

"Our Big-City," she said.

Before us lay an area upon which was spread a confusion of globes. Circular, yet visually flat of depth. In size I found them later to be, from the smallest some twice my own height, to others I would in my own world have said to be a hundred feet in diameter. Opaque grey globes, of a material unnameable. Of every size they lay seemingly strewn about; and in places piled one upon the other. All of grey color that glistened with a sheen of iridescence.

The Big-City. Diminished by distance it seemed indeed as though a thousand varying-sized soap bubbles, smoke-filled, lay piled together. And the whole flattened, queerly unnatural like a picture with a wrong perspective.

The globes were scattered about; but as we approached I saw open spaces twisting among them like tortuous streets. Horizontal streets; and vertical streets as well. Abruptly I realized that this realm was not cast like my own upon a single plane. On earth we move chiefly in a world of two dimensions -- only in the air or water do we have the freedom of three. Here, the vertical and the horizontal seemed no different.

Bee said, "The Big-City. Houses -- " Her voice trailed away into wonderment. From our presently nearer viewpoint, movement showed in the city; beings -- people like ourselves -- moving about the streets. And soon we were among the globes -- within the city.

I say, "Soon. " I can remember no conception of time, save in terms of the events within my ken. How _long_ it was from our crossing the borderline until we reached the city I do not know -- we moved, walked and entered the city. How far we walked -- that too I do not know.

The people we passed did not heed us; the globes, from whatever angle we viewed them were circular, seemingly flat, but always flat in the unseen dimension. We passed close to one. It appeared solid. It had no apertures -- no doors nor windows. A man went by us -- a shape in the guise of a man; and he entered the globe by passing through it. It yielded to his passage; its substance closed after him, opaque, sleek, glistening as before.